


a (sort of) cinderella story

by indecisively_yours



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Once Upon a Time Secret Santa 2016, babysitter!Killian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 16:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9246053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indecisively_yours/pseuds/indecisively_yours
Summary: Sure she sits with him for a while after he’s put Henry to bed following a late stakeout and sure she invites him over to make dinner more often than she doesn’t but that’s their usual. It isn’t because she likes him, likes him.(No one tell Henry he agreed to this silly masquerade because he likes, likes her, okay?)





	

“Are you sure you’re okay to watch him?” **  
**

Killian nods as he stands by her front door, watching as she slips on her boots then reaches for her jacket.

“As I’ve told you countless times, Swan, what good is it for you to pay a babysitter when I’m next door?”

Emma shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just…weird. You drop everything you’re doing just to look after Henry whenever I get a call and you won’t even let me pay you.”

Killian smiles as he grabs the beanie from the table and slips it on her head. “I can assure you, I had no other plans tonight but to watch the game, something I can easily do with your television.”

She grumbles something under her breath, something that sounds like an, _if you say so_ , before she grabs her keys from the bowl and slips them into her pocket.

“Just make sure he’s in bed by ten and no sweets after dinner,” she tells him, zipping up her jacket.

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Killian…”

He laughs, ushering her out the door. “Off you go, Swan. Your boy couldn’t be in better hands. Well, hand but you get the point.”

She groans, all but slamming the door shut when she goes. It only takes her a minute to turn back and throw the door open, running back inside to drop another kiss to Henry’s head and grab the gloves she left behind.

“Be good for Killian!” she shouts on her way out.

He sends Belle a text that he can’t make it out on the blind date—the third one she’s set up for him this month—before slipping his phone back into his pocket.

“Pizza for dinner sound good?” he calls out upon finding no sight of the ten-year old boy in the living room.

“Yeah!” comes Henry’s muffled response from his bedroom.

In the time it takes for him to place their order—their usual: extra cheese, extra pepperoni, banana peppers on his side—the young boy surfaces from the bedroom, appearing at his side with his storybook in hand.

“Do you like my mom?” Henry asks, looking up at him.

Killian furrows his brows. “Of course I like your mum, lad. She’s my friend, just like you.”

“No.” Henry shakes his head just as Killian turns to the refrigerator to grab a can of soda. (It’s the caffeine free kind, the ones Emma’s taken to buying now that Killian’s been babysitting more often now and seems to have the worst resolve ever when it comes to her ten-year old boy.) “I mean do you _like her, like her_?”

He hits his head against the top door, coming to stand at his full height once he processes the question he’s been asked. “Like her?” he says, turning to the boy as he rubs the sore spot on the back of his head. “I—why would you ask me that?”

Henry shrugs. “I see the way you look at her all the time. It’s the same way Snow White and Prince Charming look at each other in my book,” he says, sitting down at the kitchen table. “It’s how Princess Leia and Prince Charles look at each other, too, but that’s only because they’re on a secret mission and can’t admit to each other how they feel.”

He sometimes wonders if he’s babysitting a ten-year old or if he’s secretly been switched with someone older.

“Henry, I—” He shakes his head, sitting down at the opened chair. Denying it now, especially with the way he’s looking up at him, would just be a recipe for disaster. So, he resorts to one of the few diversion tactics he uses with his own brother. “Whatever feelings I may or may not have toward your mother don’t change the fact that she does not reciprocate them.”

Henry furrows his brows at that, arms crossing and resting atop the table.

“She doesn’t feel the same way about me that I do about her,” Killian reiterates.

“That’s not true,” Henry’s quick to say. “My mom likes you, I know it!”

There’s no use arguing with a pre-teen, Killian reasons, for the minute he opens his mouth to protest, he’s cut off.

“She lets you hang out here all the time, even after I’ve gone to bed.”

“I’m babysitting you, lad. I have to wait until she comes home before I can run out the door.”

“She invites you over for dinner all the time.”

“That’s because she can’t cook much herself, so she tricks me into cooking for the both of you.”

“And she lets you put her hat on for her.”

At that, Killian’s jaw goes slack. What could that possibly have to do with anything?

“She doesn’t even let my Uncle David do that, and he’s family.”

He feels like he’s grasping for straws now, folding his hands atop the table and saying, “You let me put your hat on you before we go out.”

Henry shrugs. “That’s different.”

“Yeah? How so?”

He shrugs again, opening up his book and averting his attention to the well-read pages of Leia and Charles. “You do it like a dad would do it. It’s so not the same when you do it for my mom.”

He stills, heart hammering away in his chest as Henry sits there, completely unaware of what his words mean. Killian gets no moment to continue the conversation before the doorbell rings.

“Pizza’s here!” Henry cheers, hopping off his chair.

“Ah, ah, ah!” Killian stops him. “Book off the table and hands washed first, please.”

Henry grumbles something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like a _sure, dad_ before he’s off, leaving Killian far too alone with his thoughts.

-

-

He spends weeks in resigned silence; weeks just cataloguing every move, every gesture toward him by Emma Swan just to see if Henry’s right. It drives him up a wall, that’s what it all does.

Sure she sits with him for a while after he’s put Henry to bed following a late stakeout, sure she invites him over to make dinner more often than she doesn’t but that’s their usual. What isn’t are the fleeting touches here and there, the way she leans against him when she joins him on the couch, the way she feels comfortable enough to just power nap with her head against his shoulder before he’s off for the night.

Well, maybe they’ve been there all along. For all he knows, he’s been so worried about hiding his feelings from Emma that he’s been oblivious to the signals she’s been sending his way. Or maybe he’s just looking too much into everything that’s happened and making something out of nothing.

(This second idea appeals to him more; it gives him less responsibility to act.)

He plans on burying all of this, burying all of his unrequited feelings into a tiny box and ignoring them until the last possible second, but life doesn’t really work out the way people intend, does it?

“You forgot her hat,” Henry says, throwing the grey beanie onto Killian’s lap.

“Your mum forgot her own hat, lad,” Killian answers, hoping that’ll be the end of that.

He’s almost convinced it is, until he returns with an invitation to a New Year’s Eve masquerade at the hall on the other side of town. Sitting down next to him, Henry opens up his book to Cinderella’s story and nudges Killian to read along with him.

He wonders where he got his knack of subtlety from, truly.

-

-

He feels like a fool, walking into the hall with a half-mask on and no date. He wishes he could blame the younger lad for this, but aside from the mask and firm instructions that she was leaving at exactly midnight to pick Henry up from Violet’s house, Henry left Killian to his own devices.

His eyes hone in on Emma by the open bar the minute he steps into the room. She’s hard to miss, with a silver mask that makes her green eyes shine and a grey dress that hugs her in all the right places. It takes him a minute to gather up the courage to walk up to her, all but ready to turn around when he spots another male figure standing next to her.

To his luck, her cold shoulder dismisses him almost immediately.

_Show time_ , Killian thinks, coming to a stop next to her.

“I’ll have what she’s having,” he tells the bartender, slipping into the dreaded American accent he only ever uses when Henry wants to prank call David.

She glances over at him. He raises his glass to her, taking a sip of the rum she’s taken to sipping for the night. “What, not ordering one for me, too?” Emma says over her glass.

“You seem like a lady who doesn’t need a man to order her drinks for her,” he says, small smirk on his face.

He catches a hint of a smile on her face before she knocks back what’s in her glass. “Next one’s on him,” she calls out to the bartender.

-

-

They spend the night talking.

She tells him about Henry. They’re things he knows, like his affinity for reading and his desire to write stories of his own or how he one time snuck into her car before a stakeout and almost gave her a heart attack. She draws the line at anything personal, and a comment she makes under her breath makes him wonder how many guys just checked out once she mentioned the son.

He tells her about Liam. It’s not exactly a son, but they’re stories she hasn’t heard before. Stories from their childhood, back when things weren’t so hectic and they weren’t an ocean apart like they are now. He leaves out those details, though, the ones that would probably clue her into the man behind the mask.

With a few minutes left before midnight, he asks her to dance. He expects her to say no; with the way she glances at the clock on the wall, he expects her to make up an excuse and see herself out. Instead, she nods and grabs his hand, leading him onto the dancefloor.

“I’ll admit, I’m not much of a dancer,” she says, resting her other hand in his shoulder.

“Just follow my lead,” he tells her.

“You know how to do this—whatever this is?”

“It’s called a waltz. And the only rule is, pick a partner who knows what they’re doing.”

And he does, know how to dance this. It doesn’t last long, this song quickly switching to a more modern love song. He expects her to make up an excuse then, to make it a one dance and run kind of situation, but she holds him close as the music continues.

Before he knows it, the dj announces the last minute of the year. He can’t do anything but stare at her as she stares at the projection of the ball dropping on the screen, a countdown of their own going off.

Henry was wrong. He doesn’t _like her, like her_.

He loves her.

He reaches behind him, ready to take the mask off, mumbling along with everyone else as the countdown goes from five to one.

As half the room calls out a chorus of “Happy New Year!” once the timer hits zero, Emma turns to him and kisses him. It’s a brief thing, a barely there kind of kiss, but it happens and it has his heart racing all the same.

She disappears before he gets his bearings.

Unlike the Cinderella in Henry’s storybook, he’s the one left behind, with nothing but a growing need for her in his heart to remember the night by.

-

-

There’s a pep in his step all the way home, a giddiness in his heart he just can’t contain—nor does he really want to, truth be told.

She kissed him. Emma Swan kissed Killian Jones.

She spent the night with him, talking, dancing, and then when midnight hit, she kissed him.

She also left him, alone, right after midnight. Just disappeared like a thief in the night.

The pep dies down and the racing heart becomes a growing ache as he settles into bed and realizes that no, Emma Swan did not kiss him.

She kissed a stranger, and that was that.

-

-

He’s almost glad for the quietness that comes to her job the following days. Sure, he doesn’t see Henry that much, not unless he’s waving him off while he’s already on the bus, but holing himself up in his apartment all night after work isn’t so bad, is it?

The alternative would be coming face to face with the woman who definitely does not have feelings for him. In his book, avoiding all of that’s way worse.

It goes well for the first few days into the year, until the one night he plans on getting take out for dinner, she and Henry seem to have the same idea. The boy mutters his greetings, clearly still engrossed in the new handheld gaming system he knows Emma and David chipped in for as a present this year.

“Hey,” Emma says, stopping him just before he reaches the stairs. “Can we talk?”

“Sure.” Killian nods, shoving his hands into his pockets. “What’s up? Need someone to watch Henry tonight?”

She shakes her head. “It’s not that. It’s…” she begins to say, but pauses, taking a glance back at Henry.

He watches her, curiously, as she slips the hat from her head and slips it onto his. He furrows his brows, though finds himself biting his tongue when she slides the fabric over his eyes. The question dies on his lips as he feels her hands on his cheeks then her lips over his.

It’s not as brief as before, this kiss. He feels the weight of her against him, the softness of her lips on his. She pulls away a moment later, resting her forehead against his.

“I’ve been wanting to do that all week,” she mumbles against his lips.

He pulls away abruptly, shoving the beanie off his head. “You knew? This entire time, you knew?”

She nods. “I’d know that jawline anywhere, Killian Jones.”

He grabs her by her jacket and tugs her back to him. Before he can kiss her again, Henry whines from behind her.

“So can we go eat now? Because I’m starving!”

Emma laughs, grabbing Killian’s hand and tugging him along with them.

And if he stops and slips Emma’s beanie back on her head, well, it’s only because he _likes her, likes her._

**Author's Note:**

> for shady-swan-jones over on tumblr! you can find me there at themmaswan!


End file.
